My fellow waygooks (non-Korean people), I get you, ordering Korean food can be intimidating! So my first exposure to Korean food was taking my mom and stepdad to what I perceived to be an upscale Korean restaurant in my new neighborhood, fresh out of undergrad with my brand new job. And boy were we lost on that menu. The Korean characters, the English words we didn’t understand, we had no idea what to get or what we were getting. Somehow I think we all settled on soups, and between the tentacles and tripe and seaweed, our palettes were just not ready for that kind of culinary leap. We ended up at the deli around the corner.
Step back. So I grew up in the kitchen. My mother taught me how to cook at a very young age, which helped me to land a job at the local seafood restaurant at the age of 15. From there, I stepped up to a year-round, upscale dining experience restaurant as the #2 chef. Taking my passions further, I did an internship in Atlantic City at one of those casinos, which I proudly can say is no longer in existence, but it was a tremendous learning experience. At that point I had a choice, pursue culinary school, or attend a more traditional 4-year college. I chose the latter, but really it could have gone either way. After cooking for hundreds of people a night, I found cooking for my friends in a dorm kitchen to still satisfy the itch. Later on in grad school, I started working on a taco truck to make ends meet, and found my knife skills were still as clumsy as ever!
While in grad school, my Korean American friend was very eager to share his home cuisine with us. I remember telling him that I really didn’t like seafood, despite growing up on the water and fishing and crabbing every week, so if he could pick a dish for me that wasn’t fishy, I’d appreciate it. I believe I ended up with a kimchi jigae, which, as prepared at that restaurant, was pretty damn fishy for my tongue. Korean food firmly went into the bucket of “not gonna touch this ever again.” And I didn’t.
Fast forward to meeting the man who would become my husband and puppy daddy, a man who loved my cooking. He spent four years of his wandering 30s teaching English in Seoul. Seeing how much of a foodie I was, and how woefully blind I was to the cuisine from the peninsula of Korea, he lowered the barrier to entry to accommodate my tastes and dietary constraints. Fortunately for us, the Allston area of Boston is almost like a little Korea town. We started with the easiest entry point, BBQ, then worked our way to bibimbops, then rice dishes, then soups, and so on. As the years progressed, we had visited about 90% of the Korean establishments in the greater Boston area. And my palette had also adjusted: I could deal with a little fishy flavor in my kimchi jigae (kimchi soup) or tteokbokki (rice cakes served with fish cakes), kim (seaweed paper) started to be less appalling, and I loved finding new digs.
I also took on the challenge of learning to cook Korean myself, with a little guidance from Maangchi, my husband, and by talking to the chefs at the Korean places we literally haunted. Cooking Korean food for my friends and family in a way that fit their dietary needs and preferences became my passion. So I decided to share the recipe modifications I’d come up with to adapt to nutritional needs, and tips on how to approach eating at Korean restaurants, here in this blog. I’ll also review restaurants not just in Boston but along our travels, and the Korean-esque grocery finds that are popping up. My goal is to bring the joy of cooking and eating Korean to those who come from a different vantage point and culture, and make it more accessible. I hope you’ll join me on this journey, and take the plunge beyond BBQ into the complex, spicy, savory flavors that make up Korean dining. And as in Korea, good food is best when shared, so spread the love to your friends and family by going out or cooking a nice meal that is sure to impress!
Let’s eat!
